The majority of MPs voted against allowing a Boundary Commission to cause an inquiry to be held in relation to proposals to alter constituencies.

Under the rejected proposal only one objector would have been sufficient to enable the commission to initiate an inquiry but an inquiry would only have been permitted following the publication of a report by a commission if one had not been held before publication.

The rejected amendment would have removed the following lines from a section of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill[1][2] titled Boundary Commission proposals: publicity and consultation

(2) A Boundary Commission may not cause a public inquiry to be held for the purposes of a report under this Act.

(3) Where a Boundary Commission revise any proposed recommendations after publicising them under subsection (1) above—

(a) that subsection also applies to the revised proposals, but

(b) it does not apply to any proposals revised a second time.”

(2) Section 6 of the 1986 Act (local inquiries) is repealed.

The amendment voted on would have replaced the above with:

(1A) A Boundary Commission may cause a local inquiry to be held for the purposes of a report under this Act where, on publication of a recommendation of a Boundary Commission for the alteration of any constituency, the Commission receives any representation objecting to the proposed recommendation from an interested authority or from a body of electors numbering one hundred or more.

(1B) Where a local inquiry was held in respect of the constituencies before the publication of the notice mentioned in subsection (1) above, that subsection shall not apply if the Commission, after considering the matters discussed at the local inquiry, the nature of the representations received on the publication of the notice and any other relevant circumstances, is of an opinion that a further local inquiry would not be justified.

(1C) In subsection (1A) above, "interested authority" and "elector" respectively mean, in relation to any recommendation, a local authority whose area is wholly or partly comprised in the constituencies affected by the recommendation, and a parliamentary elector for any of those constituencies.'.

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